At times, Tony Blair bears a surprising resemblance to Jackson Pollock. Like a misunderstood artist who has been labouring too long in his studio while ferment simmers in the real world, he beseeched an indulgent Blackpool audience yesterday to “step back and look at the big picture”. But as he argued that nine years of “achievements” counted for more than his past nine days of misery, that misery deepened. As Times Online revealed yesterday, one of the foreign criminals not deported on his release from prison, Mustaf Jama, is now wanted in connection with the fatal shooting last November of WPC Sharon Beshenivsky. Mr Jama was at large for four months between Charles Clarke’s first knowledge of the failure-to-deport affair and the shooting, and he remains unaccounted for.

It has also emerged that the release of foreign criminals continued despite the distribution of a detailed 90-page memo to prison governors on the subject more than a year ago. If voters choose to overlook such spectacular incompetence in tomorrow’s local elections, Mr Blair will have been fortunate indeed.

The Prime Minister may or may not grant the Home Secretary his wish to sort out a mess which, admittedly, is not all of his own making. And he may or may not forgive Mr Clarke for suggesting that he offered to resign when he had done no such thing. In the meantime, Mr Blair should seize on the one potentially positive aspect to these elections, from the Government’s point of view: they could mark the end of the permanent campaign that has characterised too much of his time in power.

Mr Blair is surrounded by discre- dited senior ministers and challenged by an opposition that is remaking itself. He has no choice but to make quick work of whatever post-election reshuffling he has in mind, then focus relentlessly on four key policy priorities.

The first of these is education. When it returns to the House of Commons this summer, the Education and Inspections Bill must at all costs be defended against further dilution by Labour rebels determined, at the expense of pupils and parents, to thwart the introduction of greater independence for trust schools. Such dilution would jeopardise Conservative support for the Bill, which Mr Blair must not be afraid to use.

He must, secondly, be ready to ride out the political storm that will accompany the further lay-offs, and even closures, that are a likely result if patient choice in the NHS is to become anything more than a slogan. Choice is meant to improve taxpayers’ healthcare; it is also meant to force through institutional reforms that will inevit-ably bring institutional casualties.

Thirdly, Mr Blair must seize on Gordon Brown’s apparent conversion to restoring the link between earnings and pensions. The Chancellor’s past preference for means-testing has been thoroughly discredited, but until the Government commits itself to the alternatives set out in the Turner Report, and to paying for them by raising the retirement age in both the public and private sectors, the pensions crisis will only worsen. Finally, the Prime Minister should commit himself to rescuing the Doha Round of trade talks from resurgent protectionism by persuading Europe to set a shining example. It is a grandiose aim that might win few votes, but would go far towards securing him the legacy he craves.